RealityCheck said:
Good question. Why does any part of the Bible matter?
I mean, if this one little passage about "ascending into heaven" is so insignificant that you can say "why does it matter", then really you can apply that to any part of the Bible.
How do you come to that conclusion?
For example, why does it matter whether Mary Magdalene went to the tomb alone, or with two other women, or with two completely different women, depending on which Gospel you read? Why does it matter whether Judas hanged himself or disemboweled himself? Why does it matter whether Jesus remained on the earth for a few days before his ascent (Luke), or remained on earth for 40 days before his ascent (Acts)?
If one believes that the Bible is God inspired scripture written by human beings who have fallible memories and different sources (as opposed to God dictated scripture written by robots) then those differences are entirely understandable.
Though they
may be significant. How?
I dunno.
Why does it matter whether the mark of the beast is the number 666 or 616, depending on how you translate your Greek and Latin?
In truth, I'd submit that a lot of that doesn't matter at all but not for your reason, which I interpret as "It's one of God's mysteries that I'll just never know about."
Please note, I gave possible reasons, one admittedly tongue-in-cheek, but the rest were not.
BTW, I generally consider a Mystery [TM] to be something for which it appears that there is no humanly comprehendable answer... and a quick check of the Catholic Encyclopedia agrees.
Is this issue important to salvation?
Not that I can see.
Is this issue important to figuring out how I should behave?
Not that I can see.
Does this issue change how I perceive God (e.g. does it portray him as cruel)?
Not that I can see.
All other classes of issues are of secondary importance to me and in this case I don't see enough information to do more than speculate.
My reason is, it doesn't matter because a literal reading of the Bible is the wrong place to start to begin with.
So you don't believe Jesus was born, lived as a model of the Godly life and died on the Cross for our salvation?
Or do you simply believe that to be irrelevent?
Or maybe I misunderstood what you were trying to say? (That is always a posibility)
In case you missed it I rather strongly disagree, the place to start is with the literal, Jesus literally lived and literally died and we are literally saved by him.
Allow me to go a bit deeper here...
Historically speaking we know that Jesus probably existed because we get lots of material springing up at roughly the same time, along with the Church itself.
That he was the Christ, that he came from God, that the New Testiment in general and the Gospels in specific fairly accurately portray what he taught, all of that, we take on faith. Not entirely blind faith, but faith none-the-less.
Faith that the Bible is generally understandable and truthful.
As I alluded to above it seems clear to me that the Bible I read is highly unlikely to be the dictated* words of God , it is rather inspired by God, and that inspiration is filtered through human authors, editors and translators. As such I tend to pay attention to cultural context and try to avoid putting too much emphasis on verses in isolation, looking rather for repeating themes.
But ultimatelly when an author reports that someone saw angels going up to heaven ... then I don't see how I can reject that out of hand and keep the faith I write about above.
We could speculate that it was simply that person's perception... but to toss it out willy nilly and say it was metaphorical... then it appears to me that deciding what is or isn't real becomes far more subjective.
If you have a reason to believe it was metaphorical, if you have a reason to believe it was merely perception and not reality, fine, make the argument. Otherwise I think you need to make it clear that you are engaging in speculation and/or wishful thinking.
